Belgian Waffle

The feature debut from Oscar winning director Martin McDonagh, In Bruges is a bitingly funny, no-holds-barred black farce that lands somewhere between Grosse Pointe Blank and Father Ted.

Starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen sent to the medieval Belgian town of Bruges in the aftermath of a disastrous contract, it manages the supreme feat of combining rollicking comedy with nail-biting action set pieces, all wrapped round a moving character study.

In the bowels of a Soho hotel, McDonagh and Farrell have gathered to share their thoughts on the film with an expectant, fully-lunched media. Farrell, bronzed of face and flowing of mane, and looking like he's just stepped off the set of Miami Vice, was immediately drawn to the project for a very simple reason: "It's the best script I've ever read," says the Irishman. "Opening it up and getting drawn into that world was an incredibly unique experience. There's a way about the characters, the way they communicate with each other, their observations on the world, their levels of honesty, and a human aspect that seemed to be at odds with what they do for a living."

For London born McDonagh, who won an Academy Award for his 2004 short film Shooter, the city was key to the film's existence. "Bruges is such an integral character in the piece that if we hadn't been allowed to film there I'd have scrapped the whole thing," the director says. "I wouldn't have moved it to Paris or Venice or Prague because it had to be somewhere strikingly beautiful, a fairytale-like place, but somewhere that most people didn't know an awful lot about. I was so surprised it hadn't been used on film before because it's distinctive and iconic and strange."

Nonetheless, there was still some concern that the good people of Bruges might take umbrage at the way it's treated by the characters, particularly Farrell's inexperienced Ray, who takes the view, "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't," with McDonagh slightly worried that what Ray says would be construed as the film's sensibility.

Farrell is also quick to play down Ray's sentiments. "It's certainly not a shit-hole," he says. "It's an incredibly beautiful city but I did enjoy slagging it a bit every day. But that's part of the beauty of the film, to have so much going on but not have one particular sensibility reign throughout the whole piece, for it to be a mix of so many different worlds and so many different emotions, was just an absolute pleasure."

A resolutely un-PC experience, McDonagh and Farrell were never worried that the violence and language of the film would reflect on them personally. "It's about creating a character and letting them speak," says McDonagh. "I'd never try to go down the route of censoring the characters or the dialogue, but that doesn't mean I share any of their sensibilities - the racist stuff, the homophobic stuff, the anti-midget stuff."

Farrell is similarly unequivocal about the content. "In my own life I'd never use some of the words that Ray uses in the film because they're denigrating and incredibly harmful, but this is about a bunch of characters that Martin created. It's telling a story and presenting their view of the world. The work could be misconstrued as being un-PC and violent, but Martin's use of language is second to none and it's really a very compassionate piece about redemption and self forgiveness, regardless of how horrendous the beginning of that journey may have been."